Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff

PARADISE MILANO

february 24th 2022 - april 3rd 2022

zaza’ has moved from Naples to Milan. Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff’s exhibition expands outwards, to Caffe degli Artisti, two kilometers away. The first two episodes of Paradise, the ongoing tv series Henkel and Pitegoff shoot at their own bar, TV Bar, in Berlin, will be on view at Caffe degli Artisti in the evenings from Tuesday to Friday during the run of the exhibition.

Set in the near future, Paradise follows the bartenders employed at the fictional bar Paradise by an ominously absent boss. Each evening at Paradise, the bartenders are tasked with reading increasingly paranoid reports to customers via teleprompter, fulfilling the boss’s vision of turning the bar into a human-centered local news station. Over the course of the show, the employees attempt to take control of the bar, and of their own narrative.

At zaza’, three chandeliers, inherited from the bar that previously occupied TV Bar’s space in Berlin, are installed amidst the remnants of the perfume bottling plant that once occupied zaza’s current space. A grid of black and white photographs taken by Henkel and Pitegoff in 2015 at apartment viewings in Berlin, London, and Zurich depict empty space and speculation.